WASHINGTON—Long after the victorious Syracuse players had left the floor after their Sweet 16 win Thursday night, and as most of the Verizon Center fans had headed for the exits, the Syracuse band and the team’s orange-clad fans stuck around in a corner of the arena’s lower bowl.

They hadn’t said goodbye for the night, particularly to the home court of their longest, most bitter Big East rivals. So the band started a chant, gleefully echoed by the fans, that ended with, “Georgetown still (stinks)!”

They repeated it at least three times. It’s the rivalry that won’t go away, in the conference that refuses to exit the stage. So whatever farewells were said at Madison Square Garden two weekends ago at the last postseason tournament for the Big East as it’s now constructed, were rendered somewhat moot.

There’s at least one more Big East game to be played, on a Big East floor: Syracuse vs. Marquette in the East Regional championship, hosted by Georgetown. It gives Jim Boeheim another chance to say goodbye—after the regular-season close-out of Syracuse’s Big East tenure against Georgetown, then the tournament title game against Louisville.

“It’s been an unbelievable 34-year history of the league,’’ he said. “Over that 34-year period, it’s been as good as any league. You can easily make that argument.’’

And this one: that it’s going out on top. “We’re going to get to the Final Four—I think we’ll get two teams to the Final Four this year,’’ Boeheim said. “Our league has been good. It’s been good all year.’’

Louisville is the favorite to join the winner of Saturday’s game in Atlanta next week. They’re the last three of the eight conference teams that made it into the field one last time before the Big Divorce this offseason.

Fittingly, none of the three are staying in what was the original organization: Syracuse leaves for the ACC next season and Louisville the season after that, and Marquette heads to the basketball-first league that will take the Big East name.

That’s just semantics, though. And it’s just one of the intra-conference subplots that comes naturally to this kind of game. The bigger one is the familiarity— possibly too much of it.

“We know Marquette, and that’s a good thing,’’ Syracuse guard Michael Carter-Williams said. “They know our zone, which is a little bit of a bad thing.’’

“I think it definitely helped us playing (Syracuse) once already and beating them,’’ Marquette guard Vander Blue said, adding that because they’d played against it and against other zone teams, “we’re comfortable against Syracuse’s zone.’’

Marquette won their only regular-season matchup, at home, 74-71 on Feb. 25. Of course, as big as the Big East is and as many teams get into the tournament every year, it’s a wonder such matchups don’t happen more often.

“I wish we weren’t playing each other. Maybe if we were in different regions, maybe we could both continue to play,’’ Marquette coach Buzz Williams lamented. Easier said than done. This is actually the second time in three years each team has faced a Big East foe in the tournament—and it was against each other, in the round of 32 in 2011, with Marquette winning. That was the year 11 Big East teams made it, and the year another all-Big East Round of 32 game was played, Connecticut’s win over Cincinnati.

Now that it’s happening at this time in this place with this at stake, emotions are flowing.

“When I think about the Big East, I think about Coach Jim Boeheim, I think about Coach (Jim) Calhoun, I think about Coach (Rick) Pitino, Coach (John) Thompson,’’ Williams said.

The players think of things closer to the court.

“I think the Big East is one of the toughest leagues. Obviously, one of the reasons why I chose the Big East was because you’re going to play against strong competition—it’s going to be a battle each and every game.’’

In the stands? It’s a battle there, too, as Syracuse fans and the band members displayed Thursday night. There’s one more chance for them to make their feelings known for the home team, even if the home team isn’t even playing. It would be a fitting way to send the Big East into history—after the last time it was sent into history.